PAX West IMPRESSIONS: ChronoBlade

Sunday, September 4th, 2016

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It’s no shocker that we don’t cover a lot of mobile games here at oprainfall. Frankly, there is a lot of garbage that gets peddled on that platform. However, the mobile market is also constantly getting more impressive, with more capacity and more potential, so it makes sense to try and capitalize on an underutilized avenue. Enter nWay and their mobile powerhouse ChronoBlade. I’m not sure what it was about it that compelled me to try it out, but I venture it was mostly curiosity.

While ChronoBlade has already been released in China, it is slated for a worldwide release sometime within the next year or so. More importantly, the team behind it have a lot of industry experience on consoles and PC, so they are trying to take what they have learned and translate that into a mobile game that will not be ignored. There are multiple ways to play ChronoBlade, including the expected PvP and such, but it also features a robust single player mode.

While microtransactions are available, I’ve been informed they are not required to beat the game. Better yet, you can get everything in the game without them, so if you just want to enjoy a fun, free experience, you’re more than welcome to. You also have a wealth of customization options. While you can only pick from 4 different classes, you can equip them with tons of armor, choose their abilities via a skill tree, and also upgrade pretty much everything. Gameplay plays out a bit like a 2D God of War, using the virtual joystick to move around and tapping various attack buttons on screen.

Though I’m not usually a fan of this method, it worked remarkably well in execution, and the only thing I had issues with was occasionally wandering to far with my joystick. However, the battles felt smooth, nuanced and, most importantly, fun. If you have issues with it, however, you can also buy a controller extension of sorts to make it more like playing it on a console. It’s all set in a cool fantasy universe complete with an actual plot and story. Again, I don’t expect that sort of thing from mobile, but here we are! Better yet, it is “platform agnostic” meaning that if you have a iOS and play someone on Android, it won’t suffer any real lag or performance issues. I don’t know much about programming, but that sounds like an impressive feat to me.

All in all I was pretty pleased with ChronoBlade, and would recommend it to any hack and slash fantasy fan with a smartphone. It’s definitely a breath of fresh air in an industry full of stale gimmicks. I hope it finds success when it launches in the States!

About Josh Speer

Josh is a passionate gamer, finding time to clock in around 30-40 hours of gaming a week. He discovered Operation Rainfall while avidly following the localization of the Big 3 Wii RPGs. He enjoys SHMUPS, Platformers, RPGs, Roguelikes and the occasional Fighter. He’s also an unashamedly giant Mega Man fan, having played the series since he was eight. As Review Manager he spends far too much time editing reviews and random articles. In his spare time he counts the days until Mega Man 11, TWEWY Final Remix and Wargroove release.